Happy making-things time!

Monthly Archives: May 2012

I taught my last class at Womankraft before leaving Tucson this evening. I will miss it so much! Check out all the absolutely gorgeous felted soaps we made- they smell so good too, mint and rosemary! Gayle has some lovely felted animals in there as well.

Me, Gracie, Gayle, Zoe, and Linda in the Womankraft classroom. I am so lucky to have gotten a chance to work with this group.

I have a new toy and it is so so shiny. I have to brag about it here because I showed it to Steph and Hannah and they were deeply unimpressed by my pile of expensive sticks.

There are plenty of ways to make your own drop spindle, but since I am new to spinning and since it is something I know I will be using often, I wanted a professionally made well-balanced spindle right off the bat that wouldn’t frustrate me as I was learning or hold me back as I progress. I tried my spinning teacher’s Aegean and it was dreamy.`Sooooo… check out my Jenkins Aegean drop spindle!

Look how beautiful it is! It has a little moon and the most adorable tiny plants! And it feels so nice and smooth! I even got a free sample of this superwash roving with it. I never use superwash since it won’t felt and that’s most of what I do lately, but we’ll see how it spins. I really like the colors.

It comes completely apart so I won’t break it during travel!

I am so in love. I feel like the spindle needs a name, like you would have for a boat or a guitar.

First of all, a huge thank you to everyone who came to our moving sale! We sold a bunch of clothes, some furniture, and some artwork- a clay cup, a block print and a handful of skullyheads found new homes. If you missed the sale, I’ll have a lot of the remaining artwork up on ETSY soon.

We also invented a new drink- almond milk with a dash each of Licor 43, Godiva white chocolate liquor, and Frangelico. Tastes just like cake.

Last week I facilitated a needlefelting workshop at Womankraft. Our participants each came up with something unique and wonderful. We managed to complete the workshop with no broken needles and only a few minor stab wounds- those barbed felting needles are sharp!

Paula made this cute fluffy rabbit.

We were honored to have one of Paula’s teachers in class as well, and she felted this dapper penguin.

Zoe and Grace worked on this rendition of their own animals, Kevin Bacon the pig and Eggs the chicken. Bacon and Eggs, get it? 😀 Zoe made the chicken and Grace made the pig.

Zoe also made this stegosaurus. I love the eyes!

Zoe inspired me to make my own dinosaur, with polka dots! You can see the kind of merino roving I used to make the dino in this picture too.

Gayle made this turtle pincushion. She used up a lot of different colored roving scraps to felt a very solid body, and once it is all the way done she plans to use it as a pincushion.

Thanks so much to everyone who attended. As always, it was a great pleasure to make things in such good company.

I am so excited about this summer. I’ll tell you a little about what I have planned- my boi and I are packing up everything and going to the Idapalooza Fruit Jam, which is a queer music festival in rural Tennessee. I have never been but it looks super fun, even if it does mean sleeping in a tent for a week. Here is their lovely link. I am going to bring lots of magazine strips and do an origami stars workshop there.

Then we are going to Asheville because I ❤ it and we will eat chocolate things at the chocolate lounge and do that kind of yoga where you sleep on the floor while a new-age dude plays didgeridoo at you.

THEN we will go to Steph’s mom’s house to live in her basement for a week and I will make all the things.

After that, we’ll be doing a three week visitor session at Twin Oaks community, I spent some time there before and it was super interesting and I’ll be excited to go with Steph this time. I’m gonna make hammocks like crazy.

And we’ll be WWOOFing at Juniper Hill Farms, in Pennsylvania which I am beyond excited about. The farm is also a place where adults with autism live and develop skills for independence. Steph and I will be living in a house on the farm for most of July and volunteering four hours a day for them. They raise sunflowers and have alpacas and angora rabbits and I am going to learn about raising fiber animals and harvesting the fibers (fuzzy critter haircuts, omg) and we will be trying to figure out some things for the Juniper Hill Farm folks to make with all the fiber!

And then I will go to my high school reunion. THE END.

Oh, and I’ve been needlefelting my butt off for Patchouli Blue. Here, have a lizard. Also, my hair is blue now.